You've released patch 9.18, and with it, many changes to the artillery class in game. Some may call it a nerf, some may call it a buff.

The old system had its merits and drawbacks, and the new system has its merits and drawbacks too. What's obvious is that you're not going to remove artillery from the game unless as an absolute last resort, especially since doing so would chop out around 10% of the tanks in game. There are countless threads across all servers with fierce debates about whether or not the new artillery is better or worse, but I'm not interested in going into that here. This thread isn't about that. Now, I'm no unicum or veteran here, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

In the latest patch, Wargaming took steps to "fix" artillery. In my opinion, though, they just didn't take the right steps. The problem with artillery is not just its ability to deal damage from the sky; it's also able to deal that damage without fear of retaliation. It is able to sit behind allied tanks, mostly camping at the back of the base, and firing on enemies half a kilometre away.

The problem with that is that the enemies getting shot at have no effective means of defending themselves from artillery, and countering it. Sure, there's counter battery, but it's very difficult to do, especially now that shells deal less damage (so you're less likely to one shot the enemy arty, which you need to do or they'll just drive somewhere else and you've lost your chance). And every minute you spend watching bushes near A0 for shell tracers, you lose opportunities to help your allies wear down enemy tanks.

What we need, then, is a way for tanks to be able to fight back against the unseen enemy, and a way to keep artillery on their toes, such that someone whose's eating dinner with 800 ping can no long happily shit on hardworking players just trying to enjoy a game of tanks, and you'll actually need some skill to play the class. The game also should have features that allow teammates to better coordinate with artillery users, to allow artillery to support the team better.

I propose one key feature and five supporting features to be implemented to make artillery, both playing with and against it, more enjoyable for everyone.

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First and most importantly, a method to let your allied artillery know where the enemy artillery is. Not a modern type of counter battery system where if the enemy artillery fires a few times in the same spot, a bunch of microphones can pinpoint its location. No, not that.

Suppose you're in your heavy tank, neck and neck with the enemy force in a fierce fight down a bottleneck. An enemy artillery hits you and takes off your track, along with a good few hundred health.

Under normal circumstances, you can't really do anything. You're probably going to retreat and try to find cover so you won't receive additional shots.

What I would like to request is a "call for artillery strike" feature to be implemented into the game. Nothing complicated, in fact, quite simple, as you already have some existing tools.

Damage feedback markers already exist in game, which show you the tank, the damage taken, and the direction of the shot. You also have a dotted line on the minimap which shows you where your gun is pointing. Using those two features, you can roughly estimate where the enemy artillery is firing from, by lining up your view with the marker, and looking at the minimap and guessing which part of the dotted line the enemy arty is sitting at.

The problem now would be, how would you tell your artillery to shoot there? Of course, you could always ping the map and use chat to type, but that takes time, and isn't very reliable, especially as each grid square is pretty large. If a feature is implemented, such that when you press a button, let's say "H", a larger minimap comes up and fills most of the screen, and you can click a specific point on the map where you're pretty sure the enemy artillery is, and that click shows up as a sound alert on your allied artillery's (all of them) game, the grid square where you're clicking on blinking for a few seconds in another colour other than white, and an aiming circle, the same as that used by artillery to mark where they're shooting at (the yellow rings introduced this patch) except maybe in another colour, that shows up on the allied artillery's screen, to show them roughly where to aim.

This way, you can direct your allied artillery to take out the enemy artillery, your allied artillery don't have to hunt for tracers and can instead just drop their shells once a location is marked on the minimap, and would force artillery to constantly relocate and be smart in picking their firing locations. You will get assistance for any damage on the enemy artillery if a hit is scored.

To insure this feature against abuse, it could be made possible that you're only able to mark enemy artillery locations within 15 seconds after getting hit, and if you mark a random location that's nowhere near the enemy artillery, you get fined a small amount of credits for misuse of the feature.

Second, a sound and text warning when either the enemy or your allied artillery fires. When real life artillery fires, it's loud. Very loud. It would make sense if you got a notification alerting you if an artillery on either team fires, and would definitely help. Say the enemy team has two Object 261s. If you get two notifications within a few seconds of each other that they've fired, you'll know that you're clear for at least half a minute, and are safe to make a move. Similarly, you may benefit from knowing if your team's artillery just began reloading.

Third, a live target marker, expanded from the yellow ring feature introduced this patch. It's useful, but has many limitations, as it's just essentially a bullseye painted into the ground. It would be incredibly useful if your allied artillery had life target markers, which shows where they're looking at in real time, which removes the need to keep hitting T. It would also be great if the marker could have aiming and reloading signs, like maybe the rings are red when reloading and as the gun gets loaded it slowly turns green in a clockwise sweep, just like reloading rings on your HUD, and if the marker could widen and narrow depending on aim, so if your artillery is shifting targets, the rings are really wide, but when it's fully aimed and ready to fire it's narrower.

Fourth, a priority system. The game should award more credits and experience when artillery players deal damage to enemies that are near your allies, enemy artillery, and enemy heavy tanks and well-armoured tank destroyers. Meanwhile, you get awarded less credits and experience if you focus on poorly armoured enemies such as light tanks, some mediums, and some tank destroyers. Bonus credits and experience if you shoot at superheavy targets, such as T95, Maus, and Type 5.

This way, you can force artillery players to pick targets which actually helps the team, and makes playing poorly armoured tanks (especially glass cannons) less scary when you see enemy T92s.

Fifth, limit the number of artillery per team to just two, and don't put that silly ban on artillery joining platoons. Three artillery per team is too much for both your team and the enemy: you get less health on the battlefield and have to compete with the other two guys for damage and assists more, and whoever's on the receiving end may just end up getting constantly hammered by three artilleries. Two or three player platoons all with artillery should still be not allowed, but one artillery with another tank should be fine.

Last but not least (though not exactly fully related to artillery), light tanks should be able to equip a special "airstrike" consumable into random battles. It should work similarly to in Strongholds, except it's just one bomb which does heavy damage to anything open-topped (with reasonable splash so near misses still can kill) and moderate damage to closed vehicles. You can't call on it if allies are nearby (say 30 metres?) and it takes maybe 90 seconds or two minutes to recharge, and a few seconds to drop, enough time for a smart player to evade and avoid most of the damage, long enough to prevent light tanks from damaging other light tanks on the move, and short enough such that sixth sense is a little too late to start moving. Any damage done counts as normal damage, and damage of the bomb depends on the tier of the light tank.

You're only able to call airstrikes on targets that you spot yourself, meaning that if an allied light tank spots something, you can't call the airstrikes unless you spot it yourself. The airstrike doesn't work as a "click on the map feature" like the first feature above, but a "click at a spot near (maybe 30 metres as well?) the target" feature (which still uses the some pop up expanded map). So if you aim anywhere near an ally, or aim too far away from a tank you spotted yourself, the airstrike doesn't work.

Using the pop up map selection screen would also make it tougher for light tanks to drop bombs quickly on the move, as they'll have to find a safe place to stop, open up the map and drop the bomb, before the target they spotted becomes unspotted. This makes the feature more challenging to use, and prevents the case of "driving by at 65km/h and spotting a Grille 15 and a bomb lands on the guy 5 seconds later without him even realising what happened" as after you spot the Grille 15, you have to stop somewhere safe and then drop the bomb, or you could simply keep driving and use the bomb on the move, but if you crash or run into the enemy team, that's your own fault.

This way, light tanks have a "special feature" which allows them to support the team by spotting targets and dealing damage themselves through calling for support. Artillery hunting becomes easier, because you as a light tank can poke to spot the artillery, reverse back into cover and call in the airstrike, without getting spotted. It will also make staying safe more challenging for the artillery player, as you can no longer just camp at A0 and pre-aim your gun for any light tank rushing around the corner. You can still give assistance even if your team isn't competent enough to click, if they're not in a position to shoot the enemy, or if your artillery can't aim on time. Furthermore, this feature takes up a consumable slot, and costs you credits (the higher the tier, the more expensive) each time you use it. Thus, if you want to use the airstrike consumable, you have to sacrifice food or extinguishers or something else, which would serve to keep light tanks more or less balanced.

~~~

These are my recommendations for possible features which can be implemented into the game to make artillery an enjoyable class, both to play with and against. Of course, these suggestions are not foolproof, and either may not work or may require a lot of tuning to be balanced, but I thought I may share some suggestions with everyone. I hope I explained my points clearly.

Most likely, Wargaming is never going to know this post even exists, but hey, a guy can hope.

PS: If you think I should add another answer for the questions in the poll, let me know!

Edit log: Some cosmetic changes to make text easier to read, more elaboration on the light tank airstrike feature.

To be honest, I can see you've put some thought into your suggestions, HOWEVER.......

As it stands at the moment, Arty (Sky Toilets) aren't gaining anymore friends, even after the Changes NERFING them and reducing their numbers.

Their effectivness is STILL great (Some may argue Greater due to to the increased Splash/Stun effects) on the battlefield. The ability to Damage/effect Tanks on the move with a Miss, coupled with the increase in ROF isn't as much a relief to Tankers as WG thought.

The ONE issue that could bring some Balance back into the game and MAYBE bring "Sky Toilets" BACK into the fold has been Mentioned before, in quite a few Posts regarding Arty.

MAPS, the Current collection of MAPS are really TOO SMALL for the abilities of the Tanks being played on them. The Current View distances/render ranges etc... are too great for the Maps. Arty that has Full Range over the Map from their ONLY Safe zone, WAY back to the rear of the Maps to remain out of the View Ranges of the enemy Tanks. Maps with OVER one THIRD of the available area effectively removed due to Unpassable terrain, Water or Buildings, making already small Maps SMALLER. Maps Engineered for Positional Advantages, that EVERYONE knows about and is wary of.

If the MAPS were made 4 Times Larger with a Variety of terrain, and without changing View ranges or Shell ranges, it would encourage Arty to Move, It would ensure Arty could NO LONGER have full Range over a MAP. Tanks would move MORE FREELY as ALL avenues couldn't be covered. Hell you could even have MULTIPLE Objectives per map.

The Second Suggestion, would be to provide "ARTY Platoon Bonus's" where 1 Arty and 2 other Tanks form a platoon and SPECIAL bonus multipliers come into effect when Targets Marked by the Platoon are hit by their Arty Platoon mate, additionally JUST a Bonus could be awarded for Non platoon mates requesting fire and having thier Targets hit. This might ENCOURAGE Arty players to get more involved and be better utilized by the team.

Your suggestions are Fair BUT would/could generate MORE arty Hate by making them Even MORE effective.

yeah i know, but why the damage dealt from arty is reduced 50% ?
so pitty for arty tanks like T92 and Conqueror GC.

both tank can do 700 ~ 1000 damage if directly hit(sometimes splash damage can do that damage), but now with reduced damage almost 50%, that tanks only give 300 ~ 500 damage (that is my experience using CGC).

i hope next update, delete the arty from list of type tank because now they become helpless (i think).

Well it seems like people don't like the airstrike feature; that's sorta understandable, it was a little controversial anyway, but I thought I might just suggest it and see what people would think.

I'm a little confused though, by the number of people who don't like the enemy artillery location marking and artillery firing notifications; I'm not sure why that would be a bad feature to implement? Maybe because the first feature can be abused, but I don't see what's wrong with the second feature.

lukavminaev, on 12 May 2017 - 04:42 PM, said:

yeah i know, but why the damage dealt from arty is reduced 50% ?

Because Wargaming thinks that if they implement this cool new mechanic that upsets the enemy's crew for a quarter of a minute that automatically means your team will suddenly stop being noobs and actually shoot at the enemy.

And if your team doesn't shoot at the enemy, then well, good luck.

Inglorious_Aussie_Tanker, on 10 May 2017 - 01:55 PM, said:

MAPS, the Current collection of MAPS are really TOO SMALL for the abilities of the Tanks being played on them.

Maps are a problem in the game; they limit gameplay a lot and cause lots of balancing issues for all tank classes. The suggestions I made, though, are intended to be features easy to implement that will partially fix the problem.

It's not really meant to completely fix things; that's not possible unless maps are changed. Not just a departure from small map sizes and corridor lanes, but the fact that most maps are purposely designed to only work for artillery when you fire from an exact location.

Paris is the best example I can think of. For most maps, the heavy brawling lanes are shielded by walls and terrain. You're only able to shoot at specific points of the lanes from specific points of the map, and you can't shoot the point at all if you sit anywhere else.

This is horrible for gameplay; while in some maps like Airfield, you do have a few options to park and fire, in maps like Himmelsdorf and Sacred Valley, you're only able to sit at this small point near the base and you're only able to hit a small point of the heavy lane. So if the enemy doesn't travel to that specific point that you can fire on, you're useless.

For me the changes were a pretty big buff and QOL improvement. Arty is much more consistent now, to the point where I almost expect my shell to go where I aimed it. The removal of AP and HEAT from arty (except lefh) doesn't bother me too much, since I got more one shots with standard HE anyway. Though, credit compensation should have been given. fv304 definitely got a nerf, and perhaps that is true for most/all small calibre arties. My clan mate plays arty almost exclusively and he is very happy with the changes.

Your suggestions for countering arty, from my point of view, is pointless. People would very quickly pick up on the fact they need to move after each shot, just like they already do if you try and counter them but don't one shot them. Second, when I jump in arty I don't really care about the enemy arty. The ONLY reason I bother to take a shot at them if they get spotted is because of how much they have shit on me. For your proposal to work, would require the enemy arty to actually be spotted and rendered, because I am not going to potentially waste aim time and a shell on a red dot or whatever that the arty might have already left, when I can instead use it to directly support my team.

I like your suggestion. Give arty to do anything but ruin other players game. SPG is different from other classes, so it should also have a different job. It, unlike other classes, doesn't fight at the frontlines so it's unfair for both SPG and other class player to give the SPG the same job/purpose as the other classes. Adding new features to the what I believe is a dead class can revive it. With new things to do, the class can be different and more enjoyable and hopefully won't be as annoy to other players as it is today. This could also be the solution to the SPG broken economy.

Please don't bump non-clan recruitment threads. I will not warn/sanction you this time but subsequent "bumps" will cop a warning first.

Things you can do to add value/meaning - prototype your proposed marking system using edited screenshots, as that visualizes the flow of events better.

Other regional forums allow bumps, though? I wasn't aware forums across different servers had different rules, but sure, I'll keep that in mind.

TechnoGore, on 14 May 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

Arty is much more consistent now, to the point where I almost expect my shell to go where I aimed it.

That's exactly the problem. Artillery used to be all or nothing: either you missed by a few kilometres, or a direct hit which either one shots or severely cripples an enemy. That was bad enough already, but now with the pinpoint accuracy and extreme splash that artillery has, especially for large calibre guns, you will always get damaged. You may not see the garage with one hit, but you'll slowly bleed to death when three enemy artilleries keep pounding you and your friends when you're trying to fight in a 10 square metre bottleneck, with the corridor maps the game has.

Now, I won't be able to one shot moving light tanks anymore. But I will be able to hit them most of the time, and when I do that, and take off their tracks and stun them for 20 seconds, they'll be sitting ducks for my team to shoot. That's not an improvement; it's just switching one controversial tank class with many downsides with another controversial tank class with many downsides.

But that's my opinion, and I already stated that I'm not going to go into an argument about whether or not the 9.18 changes are for the better or for the worse.

TechnoGore, on 14 May 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

The ONLY reason I bother to take a shot at them if they get spotted is because of how much they have shit on me.

Maybe you don't care about helping your team to win because watching an empty square for two minutes for tracers doesn't farm you damage, but if I see three artillery on the enemy team, and my team has 6 lightly armoured tank destroyers, you can sure as hell bet I'm going to take their arty out of the game before they can take my TDs.

OK its clear you have not played much arty weslam otherwise you would know some of these features are in the game but you're not either seeing them or have not enabled some options. Artilleries inherent death from above stealth is realistic; it is how it works in reality. Find a rock to hide behind that's what the walls and rocks are there for.
If the angle of the shot is low enough you should get an indicator showing you where the shot came from. If the shot is high angle then you are to close to be stationary. Don't drive in straight lines, zig zag. Kill the tanks spotting for the artillery. Use stealth properly so your not spotted.

The Z key plus "requesting fire at..." tells the artillery to shoot here. If you can see a target. If you want to tell an arty to shot a bush use the keypad system. visually divide the tile up into 9 with the keypad on you keyboard as reference. K12, 5 is the center of the k12 tile. K12,3 is the bottom right corner. This allows fast lethal messaging in chat. If you know where shots are from then this allows you to tell you arty to kill the bush at with the splash damage doing the rest. The best arty players know the bushes on the maps and so saying bush right or bush my right is enough to get the bush blind firing them.

Also If you know an arty is looking at an area dropping a shot into the target area even if you can't the target he can see your fall of shot.

For friendly artillery the reloading option is very useful.
Some arty players target friendly players with the new target reticule to signal that they are about to be flanked.

When an artillery fires you see the fall of shot. If you're not living in first person then you're more aware. If you watch some of the best tank versus artillery youtube, the tank player zooms way out to look for the fall of shot of artillery. It helps if you have someone else to bait the arty into taking a shot while you watch. This is called tactics and is how they did it in real war. Someone drew the short straw.

I think the directional artillery fire sound is a good idea but I think it's already in the game but it's not a long range, it's a realistic range. However on some sound settings it may be turned down or off. Only useful if you have good stereo headphones with the stereo settings set right.
I have been in a real battle (army reserve war games, signaller), believe me there are so many bangs that you have no clue where the arty's distant bang is coming from. However acoustic direction finders were a real thing in WW2. It could make a useful item for an upgrade slot. But it was an infantry units weapon and I got flamed by everyone when I suggested infantry units and halftracks way back in year one.

Several of the counter artillery solutions you suggested have been tested and failed or were in rampage game mode and failed or are in other games and failed. I like the air strike and off map arty fire option but they need to get it right.

Lastly world of tanks has reportedly considering smoke in two forms. White smoke to give enemies a view range nerf or to lay down temporary camouflage for friendlies. The catch is you don't want an arty dropping anything on you that if he has muddled up his ammo selection and drops a HE on you thinking its smoke.
The second is colored smoke to mark targets. With or without marking the minimap.

OK its clear you have not played much arty weslam otherwise you would know some of these features are in the game but you're not either seeing them or have not enabled some options. Artilleries inherent death from above stealth is realistic; it is how it works in reality. Find a rock to hide behind that's what the walls and rocks are there for.

Mate, I have 13 times the total number of battles compared to you, over 4 times the number of games played in artillery than you, and your highest tier is four.

I'm not the best player out there, far from it. I suppose I'm quite okay, I know the game well and have good map awareness, but I'm not extremely skilled in duelling.

I don't know where you got the idea from that this game is, out of absolutely anything, realistic. We have health bars for tanks, view ranges for spotting, use standard deviation for gun dispersion, have fake tanks that never existed making up half the game, and artillery that can use satellites to spy on enemy tanks.

I don't know either why you're teaching me how to use F-X hotkeys and chat carousel commands.

I don't know why you're talking about "directional artillery fire" when I just said that you hear the boom sound when an artillery, any artillery in the battle, fire, and a notification that tells you which one. In this game, you have just 30 tanks rolling around, not an entire battle of aircraft and artillery and bombs and machine guns and all that. Artillery makes a very loud sound when firing, even small calibre ones. Realistically, you should be able to hear it from one kilometre away, which is the max range for most artillery.

And of course you got flamed for suggesting to introduce infantry and halftracks into the game. This is an arcade tank game that has kids as part of the target audience. You're not the first person to think of infantry in the game, and I'm not going to explain to you why that will never happen, because it's super obvious. If you want to play tanks beside infantry, go try something else.

Just because you served as a reserve unit in your country's army and once participated in a war games exercise doesn't mean you've been in a "real battle".

I'm literally not even going to bother wasting my time entertaining someone who hasn't played in four years and has less than 1000 battles and yet still thinks they're an expert at the game.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Get several thousand more battles and at least a tier 8 non-premium tank, and then we'll talk.